With the upcoming (and much anticipated) release of the BlackBerry Q10, Android developers can now target the first qwerty-keyboard device to be released on the BlackBerry 10 mobile computing platform. The even better news for developers is that they can also port their existing BlackBerry 10 Android apps running on the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to also include support for the BlackBerry Q10 within the same release build.

While the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps has a built-in screen manager which will scale the application to the screen size of the device, it’s always best to build your app specific to the device you are targeting to ensure it looks presentable to end-users.

BlackBerry Z10

For developers, the key difference between the BlackBerry PlayBook, BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 would be in regard to screen sizes. The all-touch BlackBerry Z10 features a resolution of 1280 x 768 (15:9) on a 4.2-inch, 356 PPI screen. Android resources are pulled in from the res/drawable-xhdpi project folder.

BlackBerry Z10 screenshot: 1280×768 background image from res/drawable-xhdpi/device.png

BlackBerry Q10

The BlackBerry Q10 boasts a 330 PPI screen but with a resolution of 720 x 720 on a 3.1” screen (1:1 aspect ratio). When targeting the BlackBerry Q10, Android developers can leverage the res/drawable-small-square project folder.

BlackBerry Q10 screenshot: 720×720 background image from res/drawable-small-square/device.png

BlackBerry PlayBook

In addition to the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 models above, the BlackBerry PlayBook also supports Android apps. With a 7” screen resolution of 1024 x 600, this qualifies the BlackBerry PlayBook as an mdpi device pulling in resources from the res/drawable-mdpi project folder.

BlackBerry PlayBook screenshot: 1024 x 600 background image from res/drawable-mdpi/device.png

ADT Project Structure

Both the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 support icons with a size of 114 x 114 pixels (BlackBerry PlayBook: 86 x 86 pixels) which should be placed within their respective res/drawable project folders as well. Within the same Android project you can target both of the BlackBerry 10 form factors within the same release build by following these standard Android best practices.

Single Android project structure for BlackBerry Z10, BlackBerry Q10 & BlackBerry PlayBook

You can repackage your Android APK to the BlackBerry BAR file format using the new v1.5.2 SDK, and test/debug using device simulators for the BlackBerry Z10 (BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha B), BlackBerry Q10 (BlackBerry Dev Alpha C) and BlackBerry PlayBook  tablet available within our Android tooling page. Other pages which you should find useful would be our documentation page for the BlackBerry Plug-in for ADT and the Android API Support page.

BlackBerry World Submission

After testing your Android application and repackaging it into the BAR file format, you can submit your app to the BlackBerry World storefront via the following steps:

1. Log into the vendor portal
2. Select Manage products
3. Add a new release
4. Set ‘supported devices’ appropriately based on BlackBerry Q10, BlackBerry Z10 and/or BlackBerry PlayBook support for your app. If the app supports more than one device you can choose to select multiple devices for the same release build (BAR file). On the contrary, you can also upload specific file bundles (BARs) for each BlackBerry 10 device.

Supported BlackBerry 10 devices within the BlackBerry World vendor portal

With the successful launch of BlackBerry 10, we now turn our attention to letting developers know what to expect from the BlackBerry 10 SDK when it comes to the BlackBerry Q10. Up until the BlackBerry 10 launch event, details on this device had been much like those of the majestic Yeti. But fear not, all details on the device have now been revealed and we’re ready for you to start testing apps on the device.

I’m very happy to announce that we now have updated versions of the BlackBerry 10 SDKs available for download. The main purpose of these SDK updates is to ensure that the development runtimes have proper support for the physical keyboard and screen size and to provide simulators so that developers can start testing their applications on the 720×720 screen resolution.

The details of the SDK additions are posted on the online roadmaps for each of the runtimes. The focus of these SDK updates is not on net new functionality, but instead around updates needed to support the 1:1 form factor, and screen resolution, allowing you to easily build a single application for both the full touch and physical keyboard devices. We’ll also be performing demonstrations, sessions and labs at BlackBerry JAM Europe to show you how to provide a single application for both the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 devices with very little effort. In fact, in most cases your app will simply work right out of the box, but you can also easily make Q10 specific tweaks to your application using our built in framework additions.

This release brings with it an updated Q10 Simulator, but no SDK OS update for the BlackBerry Dev Alpha testing devices. The SDK update is specifically targeted at providing testing support using the BlackBerry Q10 simulator and BlackBerry Dev Alpha C testing devices (which are currently only available in the hands-on lab sessions at BlackBerry JAM Europe).

There’s updated SDK downloads for Native and AIR, as well as on-device updates for the Android and BlackBerry WebWorks runtimes. So grab the latest Simulators and SDK downloads to start testing your application for the BlackBerry Q10!

The excitement of last week’s launch of BlackBerry 10 still hasn’t worn off around these parts. We feel it in the air. We are at the brink of something new in the world of mobile computing. As you know, we here at BlackBerry have been working tirelessly to get to this point, the global launch of BlackBerry 10.  But the launch of BlackBerry 10 is just the beginning.  There is still so much more to do, and the team here is already starting on the next steps.  The first of these is adding support for the BlackBerry Q10 and its physical keyboard into our BlackBerry WebWorks SDK and the Ripple Emulator.

Luckily, from a WebWorks perspective, everything you need is already on the BlackBerry 10 operating system.  The two major areas where the BlackBerry Q10 and the BlackBerry Z10 are the physical keyboard and the screen size.

For the physical keyboard, the system takes care of handling the input for you and piping it into your app just as if it came from the virtual keyboard on a BlackBerry Z10.  However, the traditional BlackBerry user is also very used to having actions be triggerable from the keyboard when not actually performing text input.  Think of clicking ‘r’ in the Inbox on a BlackBerry OS device in order to trigger a Reply action.  If you wish to provide your user keyboard shortcuts within your application, you can use the standard HTML5 onkeypress event.  Set a listener on the appropriate HTML elements, process the key stroke and trigger the action.

In terms of the screen size, HTML5 standard approaches in responsive design are more than adequate to allow you to layout the UI of your application appropriately in different screen resolutions.  The major difference we have from a system perspective is related to some key User experience decisions made for the smaller screen size, and that the WebWorks platform handles for you.  For example, the context menu on the BlackBerry Z10 automatically triggers an overflow UI if there are more than seven items in the menu.  For the BlackBerry Q10 it will do this for four or more items.  The BlackBerry Q10, due to its OLED display, also uses true black in some UI elements to be more efficient.  These are just some examples, but I want to reiterate that all of this is supported out of the box by the web platform that is part of the latest BlackBerry 10 OS builds, so you will not actually see a BlackBerry WebWorks SDK refresh for BlackBerry Q10 support. There is a BlackBerry WebWorks refresh in the works to add a few new APIs, but we’ll talk about that soon in a different post.

What you will find is a refresh to Ripple to allow you to select the BlackBerry Z10 or the BlackBerry Q10 for emulation when targeting the BlackBerry 10 platform.  This will allow you to emulate and test your layout against the different screen sizes of the devices and ensure your design will work for both devices.  If you already have Ripple installed, you should see an update come in automatically.  If you don’t already have Ripple you can get it here.  Enjoy!

With the BlackBerry 10 launch event just around the corner, we’re also making an update available for the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha A and B testing devices. That’s right – on January 30th we’ll be providing an updated version of the BlackBerry 10 SDK and OS for the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha A and B testing devices. This SDK and OS upgrade will be delivered in the same manner as the previous target OS version, as an available target OS update in the Momentics IDE and as an OS upgrade for your BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha testing device. Please check out the details from the previous blog post on how to download the latest target OS from within Momentics, and how to upgrade your BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha OS.

Just like the previous target OS update, this one brings simply a newer version of the BlackBerry 10 SDK OS but with a slight twist. This January 30th update will also include the BlackBerry Hub, phone, and BlackBerry Maps applications. Adding these three new applications will go further to help developers test their end-to-end integration with core BlackBerry 10 applications.

So get ready for the launch event next week, and also prepare your development environment and test devices for an update.

As you know, there are BlackBerry 10 smartphones coming in Q1 2013 – an all-touch model similar to the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha, and a BlackBerry 10 smartphone with our industry-defining BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard.
Today we announced the next phase of the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha program – the BlackBerry Dev Alpha C. It is a testing device for developers so that you can adjust, debug, and test your BlackBerry 10 applications to get ready for the launch of the BlackBerry 10 QWERTY device next year.

We’re only producing a limited number of these testing devices, and they will be reserved on a priority list for developers who have demonstrated that they are building apps for BlackBerry 10.

Distribution will be limited to developers who submit two or more applications; these developers will be given priority seeding for the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha C. These developers will be determined on the following point system:

• 50 points for ported Android™ applications
• 250 points for all other applications (Native, BlackBerry® WebWorks™, Adobe® AIR®)
• 1500 points for Built For BlackBerry certified application
• BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha A/B recipients start with 200 points
• BlackBerry Elite Members start with 200 points

The BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha C offer will run from December 1, 2012 through February 5, 2013. The details on the program can be found here, and keep following @BlackBerryDev for more info.